by Seb Sharpe
In this time of great global panic surrounding the coronavirus, it seems a perfect opportunity as
a historian to reflect on the mother of all pandemics: The Black Death. I am of course referring to the outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1346-53 across all of Europe.
This was one of the most deadly outbreaks of disease in all human history, with 60% of Europe’s population succumbing to the illness. What makes the outbreak significant from a historical point of view is the great deal of writing and art that arose depicting the events.
For example, Renaissance poet Petrarch, conveys the terror of the people of Florence. He says, "O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’ A Florence chronicler describes the scene: "All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried [...] At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit. In the morning when a large number of bodies were found in the pit, they took some earth and shovelled it down on top of them; and later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagne with layers of pasta and cheese."
The Black Death was particularly lethal as it was made up of all the right ingredients to cause
the populations of the time the most grief. Being transferred through rat colonies the disease
was able to spread incredibly quickly as rats were commonplace in both towns and the
countryside. Rats on ships would also have carried the disease; this would have introduced the
plague into other European countries as merchant trading was a significant way of life during
the renaissance period.
It is this factor that limits Covid-19. The lack of carrier, for instance rats, means that the virus
can only be spread from human to human. In densely populated China this is significant as
avoiding contact there is, obviously, incredibly difficult. However, in Wuhan right now the
infrastructure has been put in place to allow the city to operate without any human contact. This
means that the virus can be limited as people can be effectively quarantined. Being an island,
by shutting down all travel as soon as the alarm was sounded from Asia, we had a chance,
albeit slim, to pull up the portcullis and keep ourselves virus free. But that chance has passed
and now we simply have to live with it until the legions of scientists currently fast tracking a
vaccine, have hit the jackpot in the war against this insidious invader.
The Black Death was finally subdued by a similar quarantine system to that implemented by the
Chinese and now, to some extent, by the Italians. The Great Fire of London in 1666 put paid to
many of its rodent hosts, but it kept raising its ugly head fairly regularly until the 17th century
and, indeed, can still appear to this day. Europe’s last major epidemic of Bubonic Plague
appeared in Marseille in 1720 and, in 1900, Portugal and Australia reported cases. Madagascar
saw some spring up as recently as 1995.
Luckily for us, we live in modern times with frequent updates and global sharing of expertise.
Hopefully, by this time next year, Covid-19 will simply be a memory to make us shudder as we
go about our normal lives again. Unlike our unfortunate ancestors who must have been
constantly faced with uncertainty and fear and only a small bunch of dried herbs to protect them
from the lime pit.
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| Medieval drawing of the Dance of Death (Wiki Commons) |
a historian to reflect on the mother of all pandemics: The Black Death. I am of course referring to the outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1346-53 across all of Europe.
This was one of the most deadly outbreaks of disease in all human history, with 60% of Europe’s population succumbing to the illness. What makes the outbreak significant from a historical point of view is the great deal of writing and art that arose depicting the events.
For example, Renaissance poet Petrarch, conveys the terror of the people of Florence. He says, "O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’ A Florence chronicler describes the scene: "All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried [...] At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit. In the morning when a large number of bodies were found in the pit, they took some earth and shovelled it down on top of them; and later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagne with layers of pasta and cheese."
The Black Death was particularly lethal as it was made up of all the right ingredients to cause
the populations of the time the most grief. Being transferred through rat colonies the disease
was able to spread incredibly quickly as rats were commonplace in both towns and the
countryside. Rats on ships would also have carried the disease; this would have introduced the
plague into other European countries as merchant trading was a significant way of life during
the renaissance period.
It is this factor that limits Covid-19. The lack of carrier, for instance rats, means that the virus
can only be spread from human to human. In densely populated China this is significant as
avoiding contact there is, obviously, incredibly difficult. However, in Wuhan right now the
infrastructure has been put in place to allow the city to operate without any human contact. This
means that the virus can be limited as people can be effectively quarantined. Being an island,
by shutting down all travel as soon as the alarm was sounded from Asia, we had a chance,
albeit slim, to pull up the portcullis and keep ourselves virus free. But that chance has passed
and now we simply have to live with it until the legions of scientists currently fast tracking a
vaccine, have hit the jackpot in the war against this insidious invader.
The Black Death was finally subdued by a similar quarantine system to that implemented by the
Chinese and now, to some extent, by the Italians. The Great Fire of London in 1666 put paid to
many of its rodent hosts, but it kept raising its ugly head fairly regularly until the 17th century
and, indeed, can still appear to this day. Europe’s last major epidemic of Bubonic Plague
appeared in Marseille in 1720 and, in 1900, Portugal and Australia reported cases. Madagascar
saw some spring up as recently as 1995.
Luckily for us, we live in modern times with frequent updates and global sharing of expertise.
Hopefully, by this time next year, Covid-19 will simply be a memory to make us shudder as we
go about our normal lives again. Unlike our unfortunate ancestors who must have been
constantly faced with uncertainty and fear and only a small bunch of dried herbs to protect them
from the lime pit.
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